Part 3 of a 4 part series. Produced by Phoebe Unter, edited by Sharon Mashihi and hosted by Kaitlin Prest.
Phoebe wrote a companion to this episode for Autostraddle’s Fire In the Belly issue.
Thank you to Phoebe’s parents, Ellen Murphy (follow her on Twitter @PhoebesRealMom) & Steve Unterman, her sister, Sophie, and her beloved grandma for having the conversations you heard in this episode.
This episode featured excerpts from Tanner Colby’s book Some of My Best Friends Are Black.
Music you heard in this episode: “Les Fleurs” by Minnie Riperton, “Concentric” by Scanglobe, “One Headlight” by the Wallflowers, Steve Wingfield Big Band Love Songs, and “The Void” by The Raincoats.
Below is a list of texts & resources that helped Phoebe shape the ideas articulated in this series, which takes its name from the ‘90s journal edited by John Garvey & Noel Ignatiev. Many Race Traitor contributors now work on Hard Crackers.
The book Whites, Jews & Us by Houria Bouteldja, described aptly as a “polemical call for a militant antiracism grounded in the concept of revolutionary love.”
Survey for White Artists by Latham Zearfoss & Ruby T, which compiles white artists’ (very smart) responses to questions like Where do you locate whiteness within your work? What is the effect of your white identity on your practice?
The entire body of work of Mandy Harris Williams a.k.a. @idealblackfemale, a theorist, multimedia conceptual artist, writer, educator, radio host and internet/community academic who investigates the connections between white supremacy and desirability, and lovingly/brilliantly calls out all kinds of bullshit including racist algorithms.
Eula Biss’s essay White Debt in the New York Times, which talks about raising white children and responds to Claudia Rankine’s essay The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning by purporting that the condition of white life in America might be complacency, complicity, debt or forgotten debt.
The book Memoir of a Race Traitor by Mab Segrest.
The podcast/series Seeing White by John Biewen featuring Chenjerai Kumanyika is an excellent primer on the “buried” history of whiteness.
Chenjerai & Sandhya Dirks’ lecture All Stories Are Stories About Power has been extremely influential in my thinking about journalism. So has Lewis Wallace’s series (and book) The View From Somewhere, which breaks down the white supremacist construct of objectivity.
Sara Ahmed on whiteness. Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White by James Baldwin. Margaret Hagerman’s research on how white children are raised in the book White Kids. The 8 White Identities by Barnor Hesse. Tamara K. Nopper on white anti-racists. The characteristics of white supremacy culture, which were written by Tema Okun & Kenneth Jones for the workbook Dismantling Racism. The essay White People, You Have a Lying Problem by Talynn Kel. This essay by Kim McLarin on the possibility of friendships between Black & white women.
Lastly, Phoebe wants to acknowledge that this work is not in itself an anti-racist action. It is meant only to describe her experience. She made this in the hope that it would be useful for other people confronting white culture in themselves, their communities or the world, where there’s plenty of it.
She invites white people to join *actual* collective movement against white supremacy. Check out Community Ready Corps Allies & Accomplices and Make Yourself Useful. Wanna redistribute your generational wealth? Maybe start with Resource Generation. Give reparations to Black & Indigenous people.
In this current moment, here are some urgent actions white people can take:
GIVE REPARATIONS: here is a Twitter thread with the venmo/paypal/cashapp handles for individuals who are seeking reparations, focusing on Black trans women, but including many Black people and collectives. It’s important to give to individuals.
When you show up to protests, listen to Black organizers. If things get confrontational with the police, you are there to de-arrest people and put your body between Black people and the police. Do not post photos of protesters faces.
Email/call government officials and city council etc. asking them to defund the police. Here is a website that has templates for many cities.
Organize for any school, organization, office, etc. you’ve ever been a part of to terminate their contracts with police. This is happening in Minneapolis. Here is a doc for Chicago Police Dept that may be helpful as a model for writing your own letter.
transcript
Kaitlin Prest:
From Radiotopia and Mermaid Palace, welcome, to The Heart.
[theme music starts, drum beating softly like a heart]
I'm Kaitlin Prest.
Right now, there is a historic uprising against police brutality and in defense of Black life happening in the states. And white people are being asked to show up in a lot of ways. I hope that if you're a white person wondering what to do, not just in this moment, but in your life, then there may be something for you in this episode and in this series.
What you are about to hear is the third episode of a mini series, if you haven't heard the first two episodes. Go back and start from the beginning.
In the last episode, Phoebe talked to some of the most important people in her life who are not white, and they talked about how her being white affects their ability to be close.
In this episode, she wants to confront some of the most important white people in her life, her parents.
Before we start, I just need to give you a brief historical primer. For those of you who maybe aren't American and aren't totally familiar with American history or for those of you who are American and don't know about this part of your history. In the '30s, the U.S. was just coming out of the Great Depression and the federal government wanted to stimulate home buying.
[1950's cheery music]
So they created this program, red lining. Red lining was a policy determining who would have access to low interest mortgages, where the cost of borrowing is low. And the loans, these low interest mortgages, were made available according to this system. The redlining system. There were four categories.
Green was the highest, and this grade was given to the neighborhoods that the Federal Housing Administration designated to be stable, a.k.a. all white neighborhoods.
Then there were middle tiers where some mortgages were available. And then there were neighborhoods marked red, which included black neighborhoods and older inner city neighborhoods. And there were no mortgages available for buying homes in these neighborhoods. So basically, if you were Black or a person of color, it was extremely unlikely that you would be able to get a mortgage, meaning property ownership was nearly impossible.
OK, here's Phoebe.
Phoebe:
When I close my eyes and try to picture being there, I first see this room, which we always called the library.
The walls are paneled in rich auburn wood dotted with dark knots like eyes. [music plays quietly, lots of static] Bookshelves line every wall except where there are windows which look out on the backyard canopied by giant oak trees. There's a heavy wood door half open, and through it I can see the grandest room in the house, which has high ceilings and a big fireplace and huge curved banks of a multi-paned windows. This is the house I could inherit someday. And it's in a neighborhood that was designed by the real estate developer who helped write the federal housing policy known as redlining.
Phoebe's dad:
Hi, Phoebe.
Phoebe's mom:
You're gonna be sorry. You're gonna be sorry that you're doing this.
Phoebe:
We’re just-
Phoebe's mom:
You asked me what my feeling was, and I don't think he at the time discriminated against. I mean, he thought if you're rich, you can live here.
Phoebe:
That's not true. I mean, at the time —
Phoebe's mom:
He didn't —
Phoebe:
The historical documents say that —
Phoebe's mom:
He didn't have a covenant against Jews in Mission Hill.
Phoebe:
He did! Mom, you can read it.
Phoebe's mom:
[trying to interrupt]
Phoebe:
You can read this stuff online. So what I'm not here to do is dispute whether or not the history happened or not. I want to know about how you felt when you found that out.
Phoebe's mom:
I just told you. I told you... [fades out]
Phoebe:
[narrating] I'm having a conversation with my parents about the racist history of our neighborhood. I instigate these conversations because I want them to understand that living in this house and planning to sell it or bequeath it to their children someday is, in my opinion, unfair. They are reaping the benefits of white supremacist housing policies of the last century. And I have been reaping those benefits to. I want them to understand this, not just to feel guilty, but because I want them to give away their house as reparations.
Phoebe's mom:
I told you that I knew that it was not enforceable.
Phoebe :
So it didn't change your feelings at all about the house and the neighborhood you live in to know, that the person who designed your neighborhood is the father of of racially restricting housing —
Phoebe's mom:
No —
Phoebe:
Covenants nationwide —
Phoebe's mom:
Which you see — When you're asking me that question, you're asking me, did I know all that when I bought the house? No, of course not. But when I found out — what am I — what did I? Did I turn around and put the house on the markets so someone else...?
Phoebe:
I just asked how you felt —
Phoebe’s mom:
I know. That's what I'm trying to tell you!
Phoebe:
[narrating] I'm upset, because I sometimes cling to this idea that my family isn't like this. I grew up hearing stories about how my grandma and her parents survived something terrible, the Holocaust. My grandma told us these stories herself. We visited her all the time and she loved us more than anyone and gave us chocolate before bed, even if we'd already had dessert.
And when she told us stories about it, they always came with these lessons. Never again. And fight prejudice. And most importantly, you cannot stay silent while bad things happen to other people. And I assume that because my family knew this, my grandma knew this so intimately that we didn't do these kinds of things. We weren't the kind of people who stood by while oppression occurred.
I know active complicity and tacit acceptance are different, but they exist on the same spectrum of white supremacy. So to continually hear my parents so comfortable with this unjust history, to hear them deny how it involves them, to hear them defend their choice to live in this neighborhood and not take any responsibility for dealing with the effects of this history, it makes me feel like all those lessons were kind of a lie.
[bright acoustic guitar plucking]
During the war, my grandmother slept in a room with her parents and two grandmothers in the Łódź ghetto. When my grandma would cough at night, her father would say this:
Phoebe's grandma:
Opanuj się. Control yourself. Those were the words I remember my father saying so that I wouldn't wake every everyone in that room and —
Phoebe:
Will you say it again?
Phoebe's grandma:
Opanuj się.
Phoebe:
By the end of the war, my grandma and her parents lose everything, including her grandmothers and all the people that they knew.
They get on a train and end up in a small German town where they live for free in the home of Nazis who skipped town as soon as the war was over.
Phoebe's grandma:
That's the very first photo after liberation.
Phoebe:
[to her grandma] This is?
Phoebe:
[narrating] She's 13. It's her first year in school. She doesn't speak German or know how to read. And her hair is the length of a crewcut.
Phoebe's grandma:
That's when my hair was just beginning to grow in. And I put those ribbons, because I wanted to look like a girl. And I thought that would do it.
Phoebe:
[narrating] When she's 19, she meets an American soldier in her town.
[smooth romantic horns]
He's Jewish from the Bronx, and he makes her and her parents laugh. After his tour, he goes back to the Bronx and sends her a letter, asking her to come marry him. She's excited to get the fuck out. Her parents give her a chunk of their hard earned savings for her journey, for her new life. And she spends most of it buying a parasol on the Champs-Elysees in Paris as she makes her way to the ship that takes her to Toronto, where she's married.
Phoebe:
[to her grandma] These are very glamorous.
Phoebe's grandma:
I thought I looked glamorous. I very much wanted to.
Phoebe:
Did you still have your parasol from the shops?
Phoebe's grandma:
No. Darn it. I left that somewhere along the way.
Phoebe:
[narrating] Then in the photos, she and my grandpa are standing proudly in front of ranch houses in Texas and Arkansas.
They look like a typical white 1950s couple.
[music building]
And then she's holding a baby, my dad. She buys him toys that little American boys in Oklahoma have. Cowboy shit, a bike, a sheriff's gun. Every year on his birthday he makes a list of all the toys he wants and she buys all of them. Because my grandpa is a veteran, they get a low interest mortgage from the G.I. Bill to buy a house in a stylish white working class suburb in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They're very proud to own property.
[music fades]
Even though my grandma survived the Holocaust, when she came to the US by way of marriage, she was able to live as a white woman to secure the incentives offered to white families and build an inheritance to pass on to her son.
[music starts innocently then becomes a big somber, stepping down into something unknown]
Both my parents grew up with dreams of being financially comfortable, of doing better than their parents. And when they're dating and in their late 20s, they're scrupulous savers. Then they get married. And a legally codified financial and emotional partnership between two white people would be nothing without someone to receive and share their hoarded wealth. So they decide to have children. And my sister and I are born.
[relaxed electric guitar, has a 1990's vibe]
And then my parents decisions focus on us. They move us across the state line from Missouri to Kansas for better schools. We move into a big, beautiful house in a neighborhood called Mission Hills. I become aware of the man who built this neighborhood early in my childhood. His name is J.C. Nichols. It's on street signs in Kansas City. And there's a big public fountain named after him. I grew up thinking he was wonderful and important and cared about beauty and long lasting quality architecture. I am told that when the house we live in was built, Black people and Jews could not have lived in it.
And I'm told that's just how it was then. It's no longer enforceable.
Then five years ago, I'm reading this book. It's actually a book my mom sent me in the mail written by Tanner Colby. And there's a chapter about J.C. Nichols. And for the first time I read these words, "J.C. Nichols died in 1950, but his plan for permanence lives on. His racial covenants are still with us, auto-renewing year after year. Like some horrible gym membership we'll never get out of." And for the first time, I read about how J.C. Nichols is known for perfecting the all white neighborhood by using racial covenants, meaning that the property deeds for all the houses in his neighborhoods included this line, "None of said land may be conveyed to, used, owned or occupied by Negroes as owners or tenants. His racial covenants became all the rage.
Developers all over the country mimicked neighborhoods like Mission Hills. J.C. Nichols became so influential that coming out of the Great Depression when the federal government was deciding who should get low interest mortgages to stimulate home buying and building. They brought J.C. Nichols into the Oval Office to advise, and they copied whole sections of his company handbook right into their brand new policies. The policies that became known as redlining and redlining influenced the value of housing for decades into the '50s when returning world war II vets were looking to buy property. That's when suburbs took off.
And then I read this, "the suburban land grab of the 20th century was one of the single greatest engines of wealth creation in human history. It took a country of second and third generation white ethnic immigrants, vaulted them into the middle class and sent all their kids to college. I know I was naive. Shouldn't everyone assume what they have comes at the expense of other people? We live in America. This is its foundation. But it's one thing to know this generally and another to see the specific ways what I have came at the expense of others. For my parents, though, it's not that big of a deal. My family needs to reckon with what we're harboring, what we've inherited and are maintaining as an intergenerational wealth management system, a.k.a. a white family. I want to help my parents let go of this idea of themselves as innocent and disconnected from J.C. Nichols' legacy, because we're not innocent living on land, that, first of all, is stolen from indigenous people and then made into neighborhoods where people of color were kept out. Stripping those families of the chance to buy property to pass on to their children, like my parents plan to pass on their house to me. We are not innocent owning a home that continues to appreciate in value on this land.
[light guitar]
Kaitlin Prest:
Please forgive this brief interruption. We'll be right back.
Phoebe's dad:
But, it doesn't mean, it didn't change anything I did related —
Phoebe's mom:
Well, that's what I'm saying!
Phoebe's dad:
But it still made you feel —
Phoebe's mom:
Okay okay when I —
Phoebe:
Made you feel what?
Phoebe's dad:
Well you know uh, icky isn't the right...word, but I just I thought it was bad, you know? I mean, because I like to sit in this house sometimes and wonder well, okay. Like in the thirties people were living here in our house, it pretty much looks — most of it looks exactly the same as it did—
Phoebe's mom:
And we know that a Democrat bought our House.
Phoebe's dad:
They were probably —
Phoebe's mom:
And so they were probably like Roosevelt supporters. And he was written up in the Democrat Review.
Phoebe's dad:
But you know that when they signed the paperwork, they knew it was in those covenants.
Phoebe's mom:
How do you know?
Phoebe's dad:
Because it was part of the current document.
Phoebe's mom:
They didn't advertise it!
Phoebe:
Mom! I looked at advertisements for Mission Hills that say —
Phoebe's mom:
Not advertisements. When?
Phoebe:
It's in the fucking book.
Phoebe's mom:
[incredulously] It says '“no Black people”?
Phoebe:
No. It says live in a neighborhood with the most desirable associations, which at the time is very obviously racially coded language to say other high society white people.
Phoebe's mom:
That means rich poeple, it doesn't mean —
Phoebe:
Look I —
Phoebe's mom:
It doesn't mean Black people!
Phoebe's mom:
You do, I do have to say, it sounds like you're in denial.
Phoebe's mom:
No, I'm not. I'm not in denial —
Phoebe:
Both of you. The fact that you want to dispute the facts rather than just —
Phoebe's mom:
No —
Phoebe:
I'm not getting through to my parents because I think I feel like I need a different approach.
I need to have this basic conversation with my parents about how their choices affect other people that aren't us. They make choices. Other white parents make choices. And it doesn't really matter if their motives are all the same. But, these choices become part of larger patterns. I make a list for easy digestion and call it: the tenants of white parenthood.
[smooth light fun music]
You say you believe in equality, justice or anti-racism, but you make choices that support racist, unjust and unequal systems.
You think that your worldview is neutral and should be considered the default? You assume everyone thinks like you do or shares your experience, you expect people to empathize with your experience. You are rewarded socially and financially for appearing normal or good. When asked to divest from repressive structures that benefit you, you become outraged. You have decided there is one primary power dynamic to struggle against: sexism. You feel entitled to safety. You think safety is a good alibi or justification for making choices. But you haven't unpacked how safety is subjective and how your idea of safety might rely on racist stereotypes that uphold the existence of police.
[music fades]
I share this list with my mom and she loses it.
Phoebe's mom:
I didn't say that there is not a white value system, but I don't belong to it! Is what I'm trying to tell you.
Phoebe:
Well then, how- how the fuck do I belong to it? If you don't?
Phoebe's mom:
Because you want to, maybe you want to belong to it. I don't know.
Phoebe:
Mom, no.
[aruging over each other]
Phoebe's mom:
I don't. I don't belong —
Phoebe:
Then why do I belong to it?
Phoebe's mom:
I do not believe that I have a white value system. I have a life value system, you know? The way I want to live my life. But it has nothing to do with me being white. And yes, my values show by my actions. But moving to this neighborhood to raise my kids is my choice as a mom, not as a white mom! That's a mom choice. That's not a white mom choice. And that's what I think the difference is that you're asking, why are you in that? And I'm not. It's because you're looking for that connection, because you want to see if you can see your way to the end of that. That I don't see this is one of the reasons why this is frustrating —
Phoebe:
So you think the difference between us is I am looking critically at myself and the way that I was raised and the way that I have I have lived my life. And you're not. And I think that's true.
Phoebe's mom:
Well, I have I - I don't see...
Phoebe:
We start going in circles and I realize that my voice is strained. I'm practically yelling at her and she's yelling at me. I complained to my sister about this dynamic. I think I might get some sympathy from her. But, she also feels like I'm attacking her when I ask her questions about the same things.
Phoebe's sister:
But I feel like when you talk about this with your friends, it's like a dialogue and with me it's like an interview and it just makes me feel a little bit like standoffish about it honestly.
I don't want it to be like this. Like, I'm just blaming my family. So instead of trying to be right and fighting with information and facts, I think I should try telling my mom how I feel. I want to try being really honest with my mom and showing her that it's also been hard for me to realize some of the things I'm trying to get her to see. I want her to feel like we're kind of in it together.
Phoebe:
[to her mom] I think that like something I've learned along this process, is that like being sort of like indignant and... I feel like my original approach sometimes is like, here are the facts. And like, you need to agree with me.
Phoebe's mom:
Yeah. Mmm hmm.
Phoebe:
And feeling like maybe I haven't been coming from, like, my own emotional place.
Phoebe's mom:
Yeah and well, it puts people on the defensive I think is the point. You know, it's- it's the problem is- it's hard to have a conversation when you feel like you're being um, attacked. I think that's probably part of...
Phoebe:
Yeah.
Phoebe's mom:
How I felt about it. Yeah. I mean, cause you're asking my opinion about something but then when I give my answer, then it's not good enough. So I feel like...
Phoebe:
Yeah. And so I kinda want to like not, like try to do it without that being a thing. And so like I was just gonna tell you a little bit about sort of like where I'm - why I continue to have this conversation or like try to have this conversation.
Phoebe:
[narrating] I explained to her how in my life I've come to these realizations that I'm complicit, that initially make me feel guilty. But then the guilt becomes fuel that helps me take responsibility and get educated and get involved in organizing efforts and think about ways to give up power. I tell her I give monthly donations to Black and Brown organizers. And every time I hear about someone in an unjust situation, I immediately give on the level that I can, 20 dollars or 50 dollars. It's not much, but I do it. And this is what I want her to do too, on her level.
Phoebe:
[to her mom] I mean, I think I’m — it’s never like you're not I don't feel like I've arrived or something like it's ongoing. But like, to me it feels important, like to acknowledge that, like, these things are real. These like systems are real.
Phoebe's mom:
But see, Phoebe —
Phoebe:
And and we have like a part in them.
Phoebe's mom:
Yeah, but Phoebe, I don't, okay, so that's fine that you think that. And I'm glad that you do and I'm glad that you're trying to figure that out. But I don't - I don't have the same set of circumstances. I don't look at those same circumstances and see the same blame. You know, I don't. I think I mean- and I know part of it is because I just I feel like, you know, we have a obligation in this country to vote for people that we think are doing the right things and that they represent us...
Phoebe:
It's like for you, you're like, it's out kind of outside of you?
Phoebe's mom:
That's not outside of me. No, that's not that's not what I said. What I just said was we have an obligation to elect people who represent us and who do what we need them to do for us. And when I say "us" I don't mean me, I mean all of us. I mean every person, people who take it seriously, that they live someplace where they have a voice, OK? And so I know the limit. I know my limits. I mean, I know what I can do. I can vote. I can support people who, you know, who who I think are good. And I speak out against people who I think are are not good. But I don't - I don't get so large that I can't see the difference between what I can do and what I can't do. I know how far I can go. I know who I am. And I know how much I can do. And I know that that's limited.
Phoebe:
[narrating] For her, it's about voting for me that's not enough. Which reminds me that we think about power very differently. That I think about the things I have the responsibility to do. And she just doesn't see those same things as her responsibility or within her control. It's partly about our different vocabulary. And it's partly about our political education and different life experiences. I think it's partly about something I don't know if I'll ever be able to know. It's so frustrating to me that we haven't been able to get through this first step so we can begin to talk about the next part, the reparations. So I do what I used to do when I was an angry teenager and I was swirling in the aftermath of a vicious fight with my mom. I call my dad.
Phoebe's dad:
Ya know, the neighborhood thing is problematic because you can understand it. You can be appalled by what the guy did, but as far as taking it to the next step, realistically, I mean, if you're... what else can you really can you really do?
Phoebe
I mean, I said what what you can do, which is like do it now or do it later, put it in your will that like the house goes to like someone who who- no one in their family has ever owned property, You know, like for for someone who's been pushed out of those systems which are like wealth generating and like inheritance generating systems in our country, your house automatically goes to someone like that and they don't want to pay - You know, they just have to pay the utilities or you leave a fund for that family to pay the utilities. That's a way. Like that's a thing you could do
Phoebe's dad:
That would be gigantic, I don't think - I think I would approach it in a different way.
Phoebe:
If enough people in Mission Hills did that, how incredible would that be? Like we're turning the neighborhood over. We don't want to profit off these houses. We don't want to pass them on to our children. And now it'll be someone else's neighborhood. And they they can do what they want with it.
Phoebe's dad:
Well yeah that would be like a game changer huge thing. That's interesting.
Phoebe:
It's like kind of depressing to me when when people like you and mom who have the resources that I don't have are kind of like, well, what can we really do? I'm like, you have so much.
Phoebe's dad:
I see that.
Phoebe:
[narrating] I know you might be like, but isn't your parents money your money? And I do want to talk about my proximity to my parents resources. How it is in my family is that my parents would help me out if I need money, but if I tell them no, I'm good. But I know lots of people who are struggling and could use help. Suddenly, they're less generous. I've considered lying and saying I need the money, but my mom always thinks I'm lying. So if I asked for money for something she doesn't just like Venmo me, she makes sure it gets to the right place.
And yeah, I could probably get around this, but I'm more interested in making them see why they should be OK with giving their money away to a stranger or to my friend.
At least my dad is listening. And I know it's not much, but I'm not going to give up. I feel determined to keep having these conversations. My friends who are people of color have done the really hard work of bringing me along and helping me see what I couldn't before. I feel like this work of keeping my family uncomfortable is the least I can do. This is how I want love between white people in my life to look,.
Phoebe's mom:
…You know why? Because I had no control over how I was raised. OK, so that leads me to my closing statement, which is: wait until you have your own child. Because you probably would really feel offended if your child said you're not bad for a white mother. [phoebe laughts] I mean, to me, I think, you know, I would rather just be a mother.
Phoebe:
Mom, can I just tell you that you are not bad for a white mom?
Phoebe's mom:
THANKS PHOEBE.
Phoebe:
But you're also not bad for a mom.
Phoebe's mom:
Yeah, okay I feel a lot better now.
Phoebe:
I think that I just... [fades out]
[narrating] My mom is right. She had no control over how she was raised, but she did choose to raise me how she did. And maybe she's right in that I won't get through to her until I show her that I can raise another generation without these tenants of white parenthood. I don't know if I'm gonna have my own kids, but I do think a lot about the next generation, how to ensure that anyone who comes after me, whether they're my own children or not, will not inherit these beliefs and behaviors. I think it's up to me and other white people to do this, to stop these patterns. I always tell my parents that if I do inherit the house, I'll give it away, to attempt to drain the power and value imbued in the house by J.C. Nichols' racist policies. But I hope I don't have to wait that long.
[pause with music]
Phoebe's grandma:
śmietnik is the Polish word for a heap of garbage.
Phoebe:
[narrating] I love when my grandma tells me this story that she remembers from before the war.
Phoebe's grandma:
You want me to tell you this story about my aunt?
Phoebe:
[narrating] About her aunt who wanted to marry a man her family thought was beneath them, and her aunt fights back by calling him this.
Phoebe's grandma:
He was a rose growing on a śmietnik.
Phoebe:
[narrating] When I think of how my family and other white suburban families have financially benefited from racist housing policies, I feel like we're śmietnik. Giving up your home to someone you don't know might sound like a wild ask, but it's actually a quite logical way to reconcile this history. To choose to plant a rose on all the śmietnik, and pass along the keys.
This was the third episode of Race Traitor. Next time I'm in search of a real race traitor.
Stephanie Hofeller:
The one thing that my father could not do that you really kind of have to do in order to obtain forgiveness is you have to fucking confess.
[reflective string music]
Kaitlin Prest:
Race Traitor is a serialized mini season of The Heart produced by Phoebe Unter. Sharon Mashihi is the editor of this series with additional editorial support from Nicole Kelly and me, Kaitlin Prest. Thank you to Phoebe's parents, her sister Sophie, and her beloved grandma Eva. And as always, I guess I want to say that by making this work, we're not asking you to agree with everything that we're saying in this, but we are asking you to sit in the discomfort that some of these topics bring up for you and bring that discomfort to conversations that you have with other people who are thinking about these things.
If it makes you angry, if it makes you feel defensive, if it makes you uncomfortable. All of those things are great springboards for conversations that will be really generative for you and people that you know. So that is my invitation to you. This episode featured writing from a book by Tanner Colby. Find links to the text and other resources that guided and inspired Phoebe at theheartradio.org. There are also resources that reflect what's happening right now on our web site for white people who are looking to get more educated and involved in confronting white supremacy with their time and bodies and dollars.
The Heart is Phoebe Unter, Nicole Kelly, Sharon Mashihi, Chiquita Pasqual and me, Kaitlin Prest.
You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @theheartradio. And if you think the work we're doing is important, then don't hesitate to support us with your cash dollars. You can donate at theheartradio.org You can follow me at Kaitlin Prest. You can follow the company, Mermaid Palace, which is the home of this show and other shows that you might love at Mermaid Palace Art on Instagram. OK.
This is bye. The Heart is a proud member of Radiotopia.
